I. For the last few years I was writing and teaching about modes of working in performance. I was interested especially in the ways how changed modes of work in dance (collaboration, community, the relationship between theory and practice, dissemination, instruction, open formats, disappearance of difference between professions) are corresponding with the current economic and cultural situation (globalisation of performance market, constant travelling, residency culture, disembodied communities, the culture of proposals, the focus on production of knowledge etc.)

These questions are not only related to the social analysis but are part of artistic processes of creation and they can be understood as specific aesthetic procedures and decisions about the organisation of work and rearrangement of materiality with which artists are working. My observation is that there exists very ambivalent connection between contemporary modes of dance and performance production one side and abstraction and flexibility of work in contemporary western culture on the other.

In the Laboratoires I would like to concentrate on one specific focus related to these observations, on the relation between time and performance, especially from the perspective of the current economical and cultural conditions of work.

I would like to devote my time for research to the issue of Time, especially because time of research is somehow connected with ´being on ease´. In this sense the research designates the space adjacent, the empty space, where we can move freely. Maybe the semantic constellation of research is similar to the semantic constellation of ease, where as Agamben writes, “spatial proximity borders on opportune time and convenience borders on correct relation”. What is interesting in this constellation of ´being on ease´ is exactly the paradox of its unrepresentability – it has to stay an unrepresentable constellation, it has somehow to designate an unrepresentable space. At the same time research is a public constellation, there is namely no free movement and no ease only in a closed space, there is no convinence without relation.

II. It is well-known that we experience our life and work through constant acceleration of time, which is also influencing very much the ways how do we experience and organise the materiality of artistic practice. At the same time contemporary economy of time is much about organisation of the future, dealing with projections and actualisation of potentials (future has to be worth of the money, of the energy and working force invested). Artistic practice is very often caught in the constant creation and actualisation of proposals, projections and prognoses. Therefore my question is – also because I think that every performance has specificity in the ways how it unfolds time - how to think about the relation between time and modes of working in current performance? Can there be a ways of working which are not part of contemporary acceleration and actualisation of the projection of the future? How do contemporary artists work with time and its materiality and how is that related to the specificity of watching? What dramaturgy has to do with political economy of time? The question of time is for me standing on the crossroad between global economic and cultural conditions in which we work and the specificity of performance practice (unfolding of time). At the same time it is also touching very important personal and collective questions about experience of life and potentiality of life today. Maybe performance is resisiting contemporary acceleration of time and seizing time with constantly disclosing the specificity of time: how time is not only heterogenous but also a cultural construction which is constantly open for revision. II.

III. During my residence in Les Laboratoires I would like to deepen the philosophical and theoretical research on the cultural performatives of time and contemporary performance practice with creative research and exchange with artists. I want to research these questions together with several artists whom I would like to invite to take part with in Durational Series. These will be series of public events which will be structured around several linguistic and performative metaphors (loosing time, giving time, taking time, spending time, exhausting time, following time, expanding time etc). Every decision for a durational situation has to take into account complex relation between the seizing of the audience time (which in this case is much longer than conventional time of performance event) and durational extension of performance. These situations are not about representation of time related issues, but are concieved as an open research situations where heterogeneity of time can appear. The research will have a similar format as ‘to be continued’ narratives, however with such continuation I would like to enable the field for exchange of performative and cultural aspects of time on one side and the time specificity of performance practice on the other. In each of the events I would like to focus especially on the performative frame of duration and explore the links between contemporary art practice (mostly performance and visual art) and cultural performances of time (flexibility, acceleration, speed).

The artists whom I would like to invite to take part in the research are:

With durational situations the material will be developed which can be later published in the magazine (like Maska – magazine for contemporary performance, or Performance Researh), however it can also result in an independent publication. Can we say that the contemporary performance is becoming a field of resistance to the contemporary acceleration of time, as a field of experimentation with heterogeneity of time? Or it is just mirroring broader cultural changes in our experience of time, showing us how our notions of time are culturaly and performatively constructed and open for alteration?